130 Jeanette Needham. 
at meal time might help to solve the food problem. That situ- 
ation rendered these men particularly susceptible to the influence 
of the revolutionary sentiments that stirred Paris in the spring 
and summer of 1789. Those who worked in the shops were 
seduced and returned to win over their comrades.*® 
Since the rank and file of the French Guards came from the 
common people, especially of Paris, it was very natural that they 
should sympathize with the aspirations of their friends and 
relatives in the great reform movement of 1789. Unlike the 
aristocratic body guards or the foreign Swiss Guards, their 
interests were identical with those of the people of the capital. 
They did not need to be seduced to be made conscious of that 
fact.27 On the other hand, the guards were thrown into direct 
contact with the revolutionary spirit of the masses through the 
fact that, in the spring of 1789, they were called upon to render a | 
larger amount of police service than usual. The uneasiness of 
the population of the capital, due to the threat of a bread famine 
and the drifting into Paris of large numbers of unemployed — 
persons of all sorts, rendered the matter of keeping order too 
large a task for the ordinary police and guards of Paris. Con- 
sequently, the two regiments of Swiss and French Guards were 
called to their aid.*® Naturally, their duties threw them into 
direct touch with all the currents of popular opinion, and ren- 
dered them particularly susceptible to outside influences of cir-' 
cumstances or of persons. 
Maleissye places the beginning of the corruption of the French 
Guards about the first of May, immediately after the uprising 
in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine against Réveillon, the wealthy — 
paper manufacturer.*® Although the economic circumstances 
of the time, combined with the presence of large numbers of 
36 Maleissye, 19. : 
37 Flammermont, “ Les gardes les frangaises en juillet 1789.” La révolu- 
lion frangaise, XXXVI, 12-24. 
38 Besenval, II, 342-343. 
89 Bailli de Virieu, 82-85; Biauzat, II; Maleissye, 15-19; Jallet, 44-45; 
Jefferson, 459-460; Histoire de la révolution, 1, 148-163. All give more or 
less detailed accounts of the affair; the fullest secondary acccount is found in 
Tuetey, A., Répertoire général des sources manuscrits de l'histoire de Paris 
pendant la révolution frangaise, I, pp. XIX—XLVI. 
244 
